Political historian, Prof. Nana Asilfie Konduah has described as totally unnecessary the change of name of the seat of the presidency from “Flagstaff House” back to “Jubilee House”.
According to him, there are more pressing things the government should be doing than changing the name of the seat of the presidency.
“It is one of the most unnecessary things in our country especially at this moment in our country and all the things that are going on”, he said.
He was reacting to the renaming of the seat of presidency as “Jubilee House” which was occasioned by an executive order by the president on March 29. The order by the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has stated among other reasons “there is no record evidencing the renaming of the seat of the Presidency as Flagstaff House by His Excellency Professor Evans Atta Mills”.
Read: Official: No records of Mills renaming seat of presidency; Akufo-Addo orders for “Jubilee House”
Prof. Kondua explains that the manner in which the name change was done raises a lot of questions about the intentions of government. He says if for anything at all the Ghanaian public ought to have been informed and a name that concerns the history of the country required some kind of ceremony.
He said “it was done stylefully, as a political diversionary tactic ”, an action he feared may be misconstrued as a political strategy to divert attention from the arrest of the National Democratic Congress(NDC) deputy general secretary, Koku Anyidoho.
He proposes ‘Jubilee House in Flagstaff House’ or ‘Jubilee Palace in Flagstaff House’ as a name that can help put to rest the political wrestle over the name of the facility.
“That I think would have sufficed and satisfied to calm down the political protest this is bound to raise”, he said.
He warns that the country may lose its history if governments do not desist from the habit of removing and replacing the name of the seat of the presidency. The danger with that, he contends, is for us to be told that our country does not exist because “a country without history does not exist”.
He added expenditure on the change of name is unnecessary and that the money involved could be used to better the lives of Ghanaians.
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